Questions

A business partner I want to bring on is willing to invest more than I am at this stage in the business, but I will be more actively involved in the day to day operations. I want to give him 40% of the company and I retain 60% ownership..
Can somebody advise whether this is in normal practice and reasonable? I've never opened a business of this scale and have never brought on a partner to this capacity.

Cash money should be treated separately than sweat equity. There are practical reasons for this namely that sweat equity should always be granted in conjunction with a vesting agreement (standard in tech is 4 year but in other sectors, 3 is often the standard) but that cash money should not be subjected to vesting. Typically, if you're at the idea stage, the valuation of the actual cash going in (again for software) is anywhere between $300,000 and $1m (pre-money). If you're operating in any other type of industry, valuations would be much lower at the earliest stage.

The best way to calculate sweat equity (in my experience) is to use this calculator as a guide: http://foundrs.com/.

If you message me privately (via Clarity) with some more info on what the business is, I can tell you whether I would be helpful to you in a call.